Happy birthday, Sherlock
by Bunnyapocalypse96
Summary: Mycroft Holmes experiences the various birthdays of his younger brother. Will he be able to aid Sherlock before he meets his downfall?
1. Chapter 1

Mycroft pressed his face to the window anxiously as the car pulled up outside the house. He watched as the couple got out, a small bundle in his mother's arms. He listened as his parents opened the front door and entered, but made no move to greet them.

"Mycroft," His father called the seven-year-old, "Come and meet your new brother!"

Mycroft narrowed his eyes. He had never said that he wanted a brother. He had, in fact, been quite happy in having his parents' affections all to himself. Additionally, he had discovered quite early on that other children were generally idiotic. Adults weren't much better either, though.

To say the least, Mycroft didn't have much hope for the new addition to the Holmes family.

"Mycroft?" he heard his mother's soft voice and, despite himself, felt the warmth of affection spread through him. Out of all people, his mother was probably the only one he could truly bear.

She entered the living room and smiled warmly upon spotting her son by the window. She did not, however, move to hug him as she usually did. Something was blocking her arms from being able to do this.

Mycroft once again felt a wave of contempt towards the little bundle his mother was holding.

His father entered the room as well. He, however, went over to Mycroft immediately, scooping the small boy up into his arms and planting a kiss on his forehead. Mycroft had to admit that his father wasn't too bad to be around, either.

Still in his father's arms, Mycroft was whisked to his mother's side where she now sat in an armchair with the newborn.

"Mycroft," she said, "this is Sherlock."

As if on cue, the baby opened its enormous eyes to stare at Mycroft. The young boy stared back in equal measure with no idea what to do. What exactly did one do with a baby?

"Do you want to hold him, dear?" Mycroft heard his mother ask, though he didn't take his eyes of the pair of bright, grey eyes.

The baby's hands and feet were just so very small—

Suddenly, the small child was pressed into Mycroft's arms. Caught off guard, he almost dropped it, but luckily his mother's arms were still supporting the baby underneath his.

"Careful, now," His father murmured.

Mycroft nodded seriously and held his arms out steadily when he was given the baby a second time. He wasn't heavy, but Mycroft's arms still trembled as he held the newborn.

"Sherlock," he said quietly.

Abruptly, Sherlock let out a high pitched wail and Mycroft looked at his parents in dismay. Had he done something wrong? Had he somehow hurt his brother?

"It's alright," his mother reassured him, "Little Sherlock is just tired after having such a very long day, isn't he?" she cooed, taking the baby from Mycroft once again and walking off to put Sherlock in his crib in the upstairs nursery.

Later that night, while his parents were soundly snoring in their bed, Mycroft tiptoed down the hallway and into his brother's room. Nearing the crib, he took in the image of the sleeping baby. He reached out a hand and gingerly touched the dark hair on the newborn's head.

Mycroft was surprised; he hadn't expected the baby's hair to be quite as soft as it was. Slowly, timidly, Mycroft leaned in over the crib and planted a soft kiss on his brother's forehead.

"Happy birthday, Sherlock," he whispered.


	2. Chapter 2

"Mycroft,"

Mycroft groaned and shoved the obstruction perched at the end of his bed with his foot.

"Mycroft!"

Instead of removing itself, the obstruction crawled up further onto his bed. It was now sitting on top of his legs, cutting off the flow of blood.

Mycroft sat up groggily and fixed his annoying four-year-old brother with an icy glare. Upon seeing that his brother was now awake, Sherlock retreated slightly until he was once again perched on the edge of the bed.

The small boy was practically bouncing off the walls with excitement.

"What is it?" Mycroft asked irritably. He happened to glance at the alarm on his bedside table and felt his annoyance with his little brother slowly mounting. "It's 04:30 in the morning!"

Sherlock ignored Mycroft's crankiness and gave him a ridiculously wide grin. One of his front teeth had fallen out the previous day, making the smile even more silly-looking. "Guess what day it is," he said playfully, now literally bouncing up and down on the bed.

"The day we send you off to boarding school?" Mycroft inquired with mocking enthusiasm.

Sherlock rolled his eyes. "No, silly," he said, barely able to conceal his elation, "It's my birthday!"

Correction: annoying _five_-year-old brother.

"Will you go wake up mother and father?" Sherlock asked his brother anxiously.

"Why don't you do it yourself?" Mycroft said, now tiring of having to keep up a conversation with a toddler. He slumped back underneath the covers.

"I can't go wake them up!" Sherlock said indignantly, "I'm still supposed to be asleep!"

"We're _all_ still supposed to be asleep," Mycroft stated impatiently, wriggling deeper underneath the covers to reiterate this. "Go back to bed, Sherlock!"

Sherlock sighed exasperatedly as if Mycroft was missing some crucial point. He so hated it when his little brother acted as all-knowing as he sometimes did; everyone knew that Mycroft was the smarter one of the two.

"_I _can't wake them up," Sherlock enunciated slowly, "Because _they _have to wake _me _up. It's the birthday tradition!" he finished earnestly.

"They never wake me up when it's my birthday," Mycroft said pointedly.

"That's just because mother knows you wouldn't like it if they did," Sherlock said with a shrug, "You know, you really should give them more credit for at least trying to keep you happy."

Mycroft didn't need a lecture from a five-year-old. He sat upright and pushed himself into a standing position, landing on the balls of his feet. He made for his bedroom door.

"Where are you going?" Sherlock asked.

"I'm going to go wake mother and father," he said without turning around, "So get to bed before they find out that you were never asleep to begin with."

Mycroft didn't need to see his brother's face to know that Sherlock was smiling from ear to ear.

The birthday wake-up call didn't go exactly to plan. After Mycroft had woken their parents and the three of them had trudged to the now five-year-old Sherlock's room in the dead of night, they found that Sherlock had already once again fallen into a deep sleep in his bed.

Therefore, another wake-up call was made at around 08:00.

Out of habit, Sherlock trudged down to the kitchen for breakfast after he woke up. He started as he saw the sight that awaited him there.

"Surprise!" his little family shouted. Even Mycroft cracked a smile for the occasion.

Sherlock beamed as he took in the cheerfully decorated breakfast table. Mother had gotten out her best tablecloth for the occasion; the one with the orange and yellow stripes that reminded Sherlock of sunshine.

At the very centre of the table, stood a bright blue birthday cake with the initials "SH" written in bright red icing on top of it.

"Mycroft decorated the cake," His mother said, the slightest hint of apology colouring her voice, "He wanted to do your initials instead of your name."

"I love it!" Sherlock said instantly, looking at his brother gratefully. Mycroft waved off this acknowledgement, but Sherlock could see the slight hint of a satisfied smile tugging at the corners of his brother's mouth.

"That's not all, though," his father said animatedly. He held up two hands for Sherlock to stay where he was and then disappeared through the back door.

Sherlock looked at his mother quizzically, but all she gave him was a mysterious smile.

When his father returned, he was carrying a small, red-brown ball of fur. Sherlock tilted his head curiously as his father put the little thing down on the ground.

It was a puppy.

Sherlock smiled widely when the baby Irish setter walked over to him and sniffed at his slipper timidly. He sat down on his knees and the pup immediately curled up in his lap.

"What are you going to call it?" Mycroft asked, sitting down beside him.

Sherlock thought about this for moment. "Redbeard," he finally said, smiling up at his big brother.

Mycroft nodded knowingly. "Every pirate needs a pet," he said, humouring Sherlock, for the moment, in his absurd fantasy of wanting to become a pirate.

Mycroft would never admit it, but he really did savour moments like these that he had with his family. He looked down at his little brother meaningfully.

"Happy birthday, Sherlock."


	3. Chapter 3

Mycroft decided to sleep through wishing Sherlock a happy birthday.

Lying in his bed, he vaguely noted the sounds of a happy birthday song sung by his parents coming from the room next to his. He then heard cheerful muttering on the other side of his thin walls. He mashed a pillow over his head irritably, trying to block out the sounds of his family's chatter.

He was tiring of having to live under the same roof as them.

"Mycroft!' Someone knocked harshly on his bedroom door and Mycroft knew that trying to sleep would turn out to be a futile attempt. Instead, he donned his best teenage scowl.

"What?!" He shouted from his bed.

"Come and wish your brother a happy tenth birthday!" His mother called from the other side of the door.

Mycroft groaned. What was the point of wishing Sherlock a happy birthday? Soon he'd have another one and then the action would only have to be repeated. In truth, the whole exercise seemed quite pointless to Mycroft.

Nonetheless, he struggled into an upright position and started making his way to the bedroom door. There was no need to give his mother any more need to moan this early in the morning, after all.

By the time he reached the hallway, Mycroft could hear that his family had already adjourned to the kitchen. Once there, he found his brother sitting, cheery as ever, by the breakfast table. A huge plate of pancakes lay in front of Sherlock on the table and Mycroft felt a stab of jealousy.

His parents never bothered to make a special breakfast when it was his birthday.

Upon seeing his brother, Sherlock beamed. Mycroft, however, didn't return the smile, instead choosing to slump into a chair across from the young boy.

"Mycroft, don't you want to say something to your brother on his tenth birthday?" His father prompted after a few moments of silence.

Mycroft met his brother's expectant gaze. "Don't gorge yourself on cake," he told Sherlock, "It's fattening."

He heard his mother heave an exasperated sigh before a plate of three pancakes heaped on top of each other was plonked down in front of him. He dug in immediately, not feeling particularly remorseful about his snarky comment towards his little brother.

School was tedious, as usual. By the time the bell had rung signalling that the students could return home, Mycroft had all of four detention slips in his pockets. He maintained that he had been fully justified in calling at least three of those four teachers idiots.

Calling the principle an uneducated hack might have been overkill, though.

It was owing to this that Mycroft only got to return home from school at 19:00 that evening. As he rounded the bend down the street from his house, he started when he spotted the scene that lay before him.

The lights of two police cars were flashing in front of his house. Illuminated bright blue, his parents both stood with dismayed expressions on their faces. His mother had been crying.

Spotting Mycroft, his father rushed over and grabbed him by the shoulders. "You haven't seen him, have you son?" His father asked him urgently.

"Who?" Mycroft asked, though he already knew the answer.

"Sherlock," his father told him, confirming his fears, "He didn't come home from school today."

Mycroft felt the seething tension in the air getting to him. Looking at the people he was surrounded by, his parents too distraught to be of any use and the police officers obviously too incompetent, he came to a decision.

He would find his brother on his own.

Without so much as another word, Mycroft passed his parents and entered the house. He walked swiftly up the stairs, past his own room and straight into Sherlock's. He cast an eye around the room, looking for any sign that his brother had maybe been here without his parents' knowledge.

Finally, he found what he had needed to find.

On Sherlock's bed, a small slip of paper lay. Mycroft recognised the frayed, yellowed edges of the paper immediately and didn't need to take a closer look to know what it said.

It had been the summer just before Sherlock had started school that he had asked Mycroft to help him draw a map to the location of his "buried treasure". Mycroft had eventually reluctantly relented, knowing that his mother would force him to do it, anyway.

The location was a little ways away from the Holmes residence, situated at the very edge of the wood at the end of their street. There, Sherlock had decided to bury a tiny chest of his keepsakes in the dilapidated remains of a barn that had burned down years before. Only his brother was sentimental enough to regard any of the objects in the chest as valuable, but Sherlock still nagged Mycroft into ensuring that the "treasure" was well hidden.

They had, in fact, hidden the treasure so well that when Sherlock one day decided to retrieve his bounty, he couldn't find it. They had never seen the chest or Sherlock's keepsakes again.

Looking at the crude map that his thirteen-year-old self had drawn, Mycroft knew exactly where his younger brother was. Without so much as a word toward his fretting parents, he ducked out of the back door of the house and headed for the edge of the local wood.

The shadow of the barn looked ominous in the darkness. For a brief moment, Mycroft felt a small shiver of apprehension run up his spine at the sight, but a small shadow in the depths of the structure abruptly dashed these fears. The shadow was sitting on the ground with its head bent over.

"Sherlock?" Mycroft ascertained, nearing the figure.

The small boy looked up at the sound, the moonlight casting shadows on his face and intensifying his already strong features. The strongest feature of all was the swollen bruise underneath Sherlock's left eye.

"Go away, Mycroft," he said, turning his face away from his brother's view.

"I would," Mycroft said with a nonchalant shrug, "but I would probably never hear the end of it from mother and father if I did. What are you doing out here, Sherlock?"

The young boy stood up and cast a hopeless eye over the expanse of the barn interior. He heaved a great sigh. "I was looking for my treasure," he muttered embarrassedly, "Can't make a new life for yourself without a treasure."

"A new life?" Mycroft inquired incredulously. Then, only slightly softening, "Were you planning on starting this new life elsewhere? All alone?"

"I know that the plan has certain—gaps," Sherlock said, shuffling his feet, "I just thought that I might—"

"You thought?" Mycroft interrupted him, "No, Sherlock, you most obviously didn't think. The world might well stop spinning on its axis if you ever learn to think."

"I just can't go back, Mycroft," Sherlock said quietly, his voice suddenly acquiring a distinctive tremor, "If I go back, I'll have to face Billy and his mates again. I'll have to—"

Sherlock's voice trailed off as he bit back the tears threatening to make an appearance.

Mycroft stared at his brother. He couldn't remember the last time that he and Sherlock had had an emotional moment like this. He couldn't think of ever having such a moment with him, as a matter of fact. Here was this child, obviously craving any brotherly advice that might come his way, and all Mycroft could do was look on in silence.

The seventeen-year-old shook his head. "You're wrong, brother mine," he told him.

Sherlock looked hurt at this revelation. "No, I'm not," he said indignantly, "If I go back, I'm asking for trouble. Billy told me today that if he saw me on the playground again, he'd—"

"There's something that you should know about other people, Sherlock," Mycroft interrupted him once again. Sherlock opened his mouth to speak, but his older brother held up a finger to hush him. "Let me speak before you throw yourself another pity party. You need to understand that other people don't think like we do, brother. We see things that they don't. We are able to think at ten times the speed they do, have a capacity to hold information of unfathomable volume to them. You, Sherlock, are different, and they will never be able to understand that."

"So what do I do?" Sherlock asked in a small voice.

Mycroft smiled bitterly. "You accept it. You _use _it. People are never going to like you, Sherlock, but that is the price we must pay for being different. We are the ones who distance ourselves from the rest of the crowd. We will never be part of the whole, but we will have something that the others don't—_clarity_. I'd choose that over being popular any day."

"I'm—smarter than they are?" Sherlock said uncertainly.

"You are," Mycroft nodded solemnly, "Not smarter than me, though. Now, let's go and show mother and father that you're alive and well, shall we?"

"Alright," Sherlock said. A reserved hardness had abruptly filled the small boy's eyes.

Mycroft didn't think too much of this emotion, but he did note that his brother seemed slightly more detached than usual. He watched his brother head for the house, leading the way. As he saw the small boy walk, he couldn't completely ignore the little nagging voice at the back of his mind saying that he had done something wrong.

He dismissed the thought and followed Sherlock out, muttering "Happy birthday, Sherlock," as he went.


	4. Chapter 4

Sherlock sat in the waiting room of the veterinarian's office, head in his hands. He had been like that ever since the news had been broken to the Holmes family.

The doctor had done everything that he could, but it had been no use. Redbeard had been beyond repair.

In the end, the doctor had told them that it was far kinder to put the dog out of its misery than any other attempts to save it.

"What do we do?" Mrs. Holmes murmured to her husband in a low voice, casting her eyes worriedly to where the younger of her two sons sat. "Why did this have to happen on his birthday?"

"No one had any control over the matter, dear," Mr. Holmes told her quietly, "All we can do now is to try and help Sherlock through this."

"He's been so distant these past few years, though," Mrs. Holmes said, concern of a different kind now filling her eyes, "That dog was one of the only things that could still get through to him. I'm just afraid that, now that Redbeard's gone, he might—"

"He won't," Mr. Holmes said firmly, "Sherlock is a smart boy. He wouldn't get himself mixed up in anything that would be harmful to him. You just wait and see, dear, our Sherlock's going to be great one day."

"Yes, but at what cost?" She said the words nearly to herself, eyeing her son with the same concern that any mother would have for her troubled child.

The only difference was that Mrs. Holmes's concern was justified.

Mycroft had been listening to the entire exchange between his parents while standing quietly to the side. He so hated displays of emotion, appropriate or otherwise. His eyes brushed over the quaint interior of the waiting room, analysing and discerning every corner of the small space.

All save the one spot where his younger brother sat.

Mycroft had not said two words to Sherlock since the whole ordeal had started. In fact, he now realised, he had barely spoken to the younger boy at all that day. They had long since stopped wishing each other happy birthdays, and today having been Sherlock's thirteenth had been no different.

They rarely saw much of each other as it was, anyway.

Since completing his uneventful school career, Mycroft had been adamant in escaping the bonds of his family life. He had since wanted nothing more than to move to the city and, perhaps most importantly, to be left alone. Now, with that move so close on the horizon, Mycroft was becoming less and less interested in the lives of his family members.

This, however, did not dismiss the sight that had been disturbing his mind the entire day.

He had been annoyed, to say the least, when his parents had asked him to take Sherlock to school that morning. The drive had been awkward and silent, as his relationship with Sherlock was these days, but it was what Sherlock had done after they had stopped in front of his school that had truly worried Mycroft.

The boy had turned sullen in the past few years and Mycroft had grown accustomed to the scowls and pouts that usually accompanied conversations with him since, but when Mycroft had asked him when he was to be fetched from school that day, Sherlock had simply not answered. Sherlock being the kind of child to always have an opinion on everything, this had been out-of-place behaviour for him. Mycroft had been about to repeat the question when Sherlock had promptly gotten out of the car without another word, leaving Mycroft staring after.

Already irritated with his brother's atrocious manners, Mycroft had been thoroughly disinterested to fetch Sherlock from school that afternoon, but eventually his mother had talked him into it. Pulling up in front of the school, however, Mycroft had immediately noticed that something was off.

As his younger brother got into the car, Mycroft had caught the undeniable smell of cigarette smoke. It had been then that Mycroft noticed how long ago he had truly _looked_ at the young boy.

Looking at him then, Mycroft had realised what a mistake that had been.

Sherlock's normally pale, yet healthy complexion had turned a sickly grey and Mycroft had spotted the distinct yellowing in between his brother's fore- and middle fingers; the mark of a frequent smoker. He had found himself wondering since when his brother had had this bad habit, but left it at that.

Him being a chronic smoker himself, Mycroft hardly thought that he was in the position to lecture Sherlock on nicotine abuse.

He hadn't mentioned this observation to his parents, either, knowing that this action would only result in Sherlock trying to rebel even further. Nonetheless, the knowledge that his thirteen-year-old brother was smoking was—troubling.

Mycroft made his way out of the waiting room, no longer in the mood for emotions.

Outside, ways allied to the parking area, searching for his car while rummaging in his coat pocket for a cigarette. As he approached the small vehicle, he lit up the cigarette in his hand before taking a pull. Breathing out the smoke in a contented sigh, Mycroft eyed the number plate at the front of his car.

The dog had been run over by a car. The driver hadn't even had the decency to check if the dog was seriously injured. When their father had found it, lying in the road just a few metres down the street from their house, the dog had already been beyond repair. The driver had been careless, probably too preoccupied with his own thoughts to look where he was driving.

Mycroft gazed at the dark red stains on the number plate. He would have to wash them off before Sherlock noticed. He took another, much needed pull of the cigarette.

Blowing the smoke out once again, Mycroft guiltily murmured: "Happy birthday, Sherlock."


End file.
